Pierre Karl Péladeau said that jobs would be threatened at Quebecor if he was sentenced to the offense to the electoral law he faces.
Posted at 4:25 p.m.
Such a conviction would lead to a ban for the Quebec state to do business with the businessman and his businesses, with major consequences.
These consequences, “it will vary from one activity to another,” said Péladeau on Monday in a hearing at the Montreal courthouse. Its publisher of CEC manuals, for example, would be “impacted in an almost total way because the only and unique customers are schools or school service centers”.
The billionaire put his business in Petrin in 2018 by reimbursing a campaign debt of $ 137,000 himself, contracted while he was trying to take the lead of the Parti Quebecois (PQ), three years earlier. The Director General of the Elections of Quebec (DGEQ) interpreted this payment as a donation, much higher than the permitted limit of $ 500.
The DGEQ sent an infringeum report to Mr. Péladeau, who recognized his wrongs. However, he had not seized that this guilty plea led to a ban for him and his companies to do business with the state.
Since then, Mr. Péladeau has been trying to obtain authorization from justice to withdraw his guilt. He also launched a procedure to have the articles concerned of the Electoral law and Law on contracts for public organizations. It was this last question that was the subject of a debate at the Montreal courthouse on Monday.
“I should not have ignored the law”
“I should not have ignored the law and know that there would be consequences that were going to come from this plea,” said Pierre Karl Péladeau on Monday. The important impact that his guilt would have, “I did not suspect it at first”.
Before his resignation in May 2016 for family reasons, Mr. Péladeau was in no way worried about the reimbursement of his campaign debt. “Behind me, there was a level of satisfaction which allowed me to think that the electoral debt would be the subject of a good reimbursement due,” said Péladeau.
Once withdrawn from political life, the reimbursement of this debt-contract with a desjardins case-was a question of honor: “You have a debt, you have to honor it” and “I can be ill-seeking[contributionsof$500inindividualsPeopleknowwhoIam”[descontributionsde500 $departiculiersLesgenssaventquijesuis »
“I knew that I had committed a breach of the electoral law by paying my debt and that I would therefore have a fine to pay”, but not that this fine included a ban on contract with the State, “he continued.
